The Business Card feature in IBM Lotus Connections - explained in all its technical simplicity by Joseph Russo in his post on the Synch.rono.us blog - highlights one of the reason I think it is such an interesting piece of software. From one perspective, I see Connections is this amazing enterprise social engine interfaced through an open AtomPub based API. This make Connections as much a tool to integrate applications as it is an enterprise social computing destination for employees to use.

BTW This isn't lost on other vendors either - from Attensa to Socialcast and also Socialtext, although each approach the opportunity slightly differently.

In related reading, Bertrand Duperrin talks about rich user profiles as an area that is currently being overlooked. I don't actually think we lack the technology, but I agree we might be ignoring it at the moment while we get caught up with microblogging and wikifying the workplace.

Giving it a go.

Hmm. I'm not entirely convinced about this, however there is an argument that if you want to ease the introduction of new information work practices into people's work routines then you need to go where the users are. I was a big fan of Xobni when I was last using Outlook regularly. However Twitter and LinkedIn are very different paradigms to integrate into Outlook - Xobni augments what you are already doing in Outlook with additional information, but tools like Twinbox (the example above) is introducing a brand new information stream in parallel to email.

I also wonder if integration with an enterprise microblogging tool might actually be the better use case for this kind of integration? For example, Socialcast is an enterprise microblogging platform and they have talked about providing plugins for Outlook and Lotus Notes (I'm not sure if they actually came to fruition).

On the other hand, Socialtext's Signals takes a non-email activity stream approach. Their desktop applications (a cross platform RIA) combines microblogging with notifications about wiki page edits, blog posts, comments, profile changes.

What do you think? Is an email client the right place for enterprise users to learn about microblogging or are we just reinforcing the email interface. Or perhaps we should just give people as much choice as possible?